THE AMBIVALENCE OF CHRISTIANITY

What Christian today feels the need to “turn the other cheek” when they are doing the slapping?

While Christianity claims to propound “universal, timeless principles” of good behavior worthy of salvation and the promise of eternal life in heaven, in point of fact, central tenets of Christianity – love thine enemy, turn the other cheek, minister to the poor, render unto Caesar, the beatitudes – are highly situational, suggesting a degree of moral relativism. Recall, Jesus lived during the Roman occupation of Israel, a time when Jews were divided on how to respond to Roman domination. Zealots, a first-century political movement “sought to incite the people of Judea Province to rebel against the Roman Empire and expel it from the Holy Land by force of arms” (Wikipedia). Jesus, mindful of brutal Roman retribution, prudently cautioned against violence and preached submission and passive non-violence (much as Gandhi and Martin Luther King did centuries later, and with the same deadly result). Blessed are the poor in spirit, the meek, the  righteous, the merciful, the pure in heart, the peacemakers, the persecuted – the Beatitudes all resonate with an oppressed people. Jesus, the world’s first hippie, preached love, peace, passivity and non-violence with the promise of eventual relief on earth (notably for the meek) or in heaven otherwise. Jesus would be proven right a few decades after his death, during the First Jewish-Roman War culminating in the Siege of Jerusalem in 70 CE, the destruction of the Second Temple and diaspora.

Subsequently, Christians suffered persecution everywhere they migrated, especially in Rome, where they were fed to lions and suffered other barbarities at the hands of polytheistic pagans. However, in a manifestation of the law of unintended consequences, pagan persecution of Christians stimulated the propagation of the religion¹to the point where underground Christians became a political force.  This fact, recognized by Constantine at the Milvian bridge in 312 CE, ² and codified in his Edict of Milan in 313 CE, ended persecution of Christians and declared Christianity the favored, though not the official religion of the Roman empire.

Free from Roman persecution and invited by Constantine, emboldened Christian bishops gathered at Nicea in 325 CE to draft and promulgate the Creed of Nicea, a statement of faith, amended and clarified in subsequent councils, common to virtually all forms of Christianity thereafter. The unifying effect of the Creed bolstered the Christian faith throughout the Roman empire, eventually becoming the official religion of Rome by decree of Emperor Theodosius I in 380 CE. Theodosius’ decree went even further, permitting the persecution of nonbelievers, pagans in particular.

Thus, non-believers began to be persecuted with the same fervor that was once reserved for Christians and Jews. Pagan rituals were acts of high treason, temples and sanctuaries were destroyed as was the Oracle of Delphi, ancient Greece's legendary source of wisdom.

At the same time, February 27, 380 marks a milestone in European history, because on that day, Jewish-Christian roots were bound to those of Greek and Roman antiquity - a symbiosis that can still be felt today.

The early history of the Greeks and Romans and the Judeo-Christian tradition have made a decisive impact on Europe, for good and bad. Because during the coming centuries, it wasn't just the poor that were fed in the name of Christ; critics and dissidents were murdered in the name of the Lord as well. https://www.dw.com/en/christianity-becomes-the-religion-of-the-roman-empire-february-27-380/a-4602728  (See: https://corporate.dw.com/en/about-dw/s-30688)

Somewhere between Constantine in 312 CE and Theodosius in 380 CE, the “old Christianity,” preached by Christ as a means of coping with the Roman occupation, dissipated, its principles of love, peace, submission, passivity and non-violence replaced by baser human instincts of murderous, destructive vengeance against  pagans, in particular, and other non-believers. In effect, the worst parts of the Old Testament replaced the best parts of the New thereafter in the heart of Christian officialdom after gaining political power. What Christian feels the need to “turn the other cheek” when they are doing the slapping? America’s founding fathers, thankfully well versed in the classics, history, and the empiricism and rationalism of Enlightenment thinkers like Locke and Hume, incorporated this knowledge in the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause, denying all religions access to political power.

Mark Twain, in his inimitable fashion, captured the dichotomy within Christianity:

Man is a Religious Animal. He is the only Religious Animal. He is the only animal that has the True Religion—several of them. He is the only animal that loves his neighbor as himself and cuts his throat if his theology isn’t straight. He has made a graveyard of the globe in trying his honest best to smooth his brother’s path to happiness and heaven....The higher animals have no religion. And we are told that they are going to be left out in the Hereafter. I wonder why? It seems questionable taste.

Sadly, evangelical Christians, white Christian nationalists and other proponents of dominionism , ignorant of the well-documented perils of political power in the hands of organized religion, openly defy the constitutional principle of what Jefferson called “the wall of separation between Church and State.” It rarely, if ever, ends well.

1.

It has been said, don’t ask me who, when or where, that for every Christian thrown to the lions many times that number in the stands, impressed by Christians’ refusal to recant their faith to avoid a gory death, left the Colliseum as future Christian converts.

2.

Recognizing the growing popularity of Christianity, Constantine knew that many of his opponent, Maxentius’ troops were Christians. Claiming he had had a vision of the Cross in the sky, Constantine ordered his troops to paint on their shields a Christian symbol consisting of a cross and the Chi-Rho, a sacred monogram incorporating the first two letters of ΧΡΙΣΤΟΣ, meaning “Christ” in Greek. Constantine correctly calculated that the Christians in Maxentius’ army would not raise their swords against fellow Christians, thus fatally weakening the opposing army, resulting in decisive victory for the badly outnumbered army of Constantine and the death of Maxentius.